Customers commonly provide personal information to financial institutions and other entities. For example, customers can provide name and address information, date of birth and social security number information and information regarding personal assets to financial institutions when opening an account at the financial institution. Customers can provide similar information to other organizations, for example government agencies, for example when applying for a driver's license or passport.
The financial institutions and other organizations can make some or all of the customer personal information available to third parties. However, the customers are not always in control of their personal information or aware of what information is being made available to the third parties.